


Reflections

by AndyAO3



Series: Shepard of the Galaxy [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Everyone is an idiot and needs to sit down and think about what they've done, M/M, Oneshot, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 08:51:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3350678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndyAO3/pseuds/AndyAO3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Commander had changed, but Kaidan knew his own loyalties. Or at least, that's what he thought before. Now that they're on Mars and fighting Cerberus troops, he isn't so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections

**Author's Note:**

> This one has gone through a lot of revision, but it needs to be posted. Really, really does. I'm kinda proud of how it's turned out. It's really too long for a single-chapter piece (at least by my standards) but at the same time, it's too short to separate. 
> 
> Zach is a creature of tranquil fury and I love it.

When Vega had asked if he knew the Commander, he'd responded that he used to.

Kaidan remembered what Commander Zach Shepard, the first human Spectre, had been before. He remembered a man with icy eyes that would seem cold and cruel on anyone else, but had only looked sad and tired on Shepard. The way Shepard would hunch slightly when going through doorways or under bulkheads, a habit borne of being just shy of two meters tall and spending much of one's life in space. How Shepard would always come off of missions on high-gravity planets looking like every bone in his body ached.

He remembered how Shepard fought, with a modded incendiary shotgun in hand whenever the Commander's particular style of lift-and-slam biotics weren't enough. Being halfway between panic and giddy laughter at the insane way that the Commander would drive the Mako, at how Shepard would sometimes use it to simply roll over any Geth or mercs that were in his way.

He remembered Virmire, and how he had never learned - Shepard had never explained - why Kaidan had been chosen to live over Ash. How he had asked, and those bright blue eyes had leveled him with a look so pained, so exhausted, that he regretted asking at all. Shepard's slightly hoarse, tired response that they could save their mourning until after Saren was finished, when they had time for it. How much it had sounded like Shepard was speaking from experience; in light of the Commander's service record and history prior to joining the Alliance, that had probably been the case.

He remembered never seeing the Commander give anyone more than a tiny, tentative smile, and thinking that if the man were to really light up, it'd be a damn good look on him.

He'd hadn't been so informal with someone, hadn't _trusted_ anyone to that degree, since before he'd been in the military. He could say anything to Shepard and it would have been understood. Biotics, training, his family, BaAT and Conatix and Rahna. _Anything._  Not only that, but it wouldn't have been considered out of line (he had even briefly wondered if he couldn't maybe try flirting, although he'd quickly dismissed the idea since he doubted the man would be, well, into that). The only time he'd ever seen Shepard pull rank for something one of the crew had said was when Ash had gotten a little weird around the aliens.

The only time Shepard had ever seriously pulled rank on _him_ had been when the Normandy was falling apart around them. Ordering him to leave. ( _"K_ _aidan, go. Now.")_

Then, Shepard was gone. The Commander had died, or at least allowed Kaidan to think he was dead ( _"Where's Shepard?" he found himself asking as Joker boarded the rescue ship, feeling sick as the pilot looked up at him with bloodshot eyes and shook his head)_ , and it had left Kaidan horribly, miserably alone. For two years, he'd wondered if he couldn't have done more to save the man, or worse, if maybe Ash could have somehow saved him had she still been around.

There was no bright side. There was no silver lining. Shepard was just _gone_.

When he heard the rumors that the Commander might be alive, he tried his damnedest to push the hopeful little thought aside. He didn't know if he could handle the grief of the rumors being false. He tried to ignore the sick feeling in his gut when more rumors followed the first ones, saying that the Commander was in league with Cerberus; it was more reassuring to think that it wasn't Shepard at all, but an imitator (after all, the last time he'd followed up on a rumor of Shepard being alive, it had turned out to be Conrad Verner in counterfeit N7 gear).

He went to Horizon on just another routine mission, looking into the possible connection between disappearing colonies and Cerberus. The Collectors came, and then left with half the colony's inhabitants. But as much as that threw him for a loop, what was even more of a shock was just who had been the one to chase the bastards off.

Kaidan knew that voice. He knew that _tone_ , the pained note behind the words of apology. Even before Shepard himself confirmed it, and before Kaidan had rounded the corner to _see_ , he knew just whose bright eyes would be there to greet him.

There was genuine shock in those eyes, Shepard's jaw gone a little slack, as Kaidan sized him up. Tall, and gawky even in his armor. Mud-brown military-buzzed hair, sharp features, a beakish nose that had been broken more than once. Scars littering his face, although the only one Kaidan recognized was the deep one over the bridge of that hooked nose. Shepard was even equipped with a big, holstered Eviscerator shotgun, in case there was any doubt. To top it off, Garrus was with him, even though he looked like'd been through a meat grinder.

Kaidan had smiled, offered his hand, and after hesitating for a moment the Commander had taken it for a firm handshake, seeming to relax. However, that had been the only positive moment of the whole encounter. Because it didn't take long for it to slip that the worst of the rumors were indeed correct, and Shepard was working with Cerberus.

No, not _with_ Cerberus. _For_ Cerberus. Garrus too. It was like a kick in the gut; the Shepard that Kaidan had known had been a good man. Flawed, but essentially good, and never anything _remotely_ close to a supremacist in spite of all of the justification he'd have for it. In the time that Kaidan had known him, not _once_ had Shepard been anything but horrified at the things Cerberus had done. Those bastards had _caused_ the incident on Akuze, for God's sake.

He ignored how hurt Shepard looked when he refused the offer to come back to the new Normandy, on the grounds that it couldn't be the same Shepard he'd known before.

It was another year before he saw Shepard again, but the memories weren't any less clear because of it. After Horizon, when he recalled the man, the thought would always be accompanied by the sting of something like betrayal. So from his point of view, and in that moment, what he said to Vega wasn't exactly a lie. Shepard wasn't the same man who had defeated Saren so long ago. Couldn't be. That man wouldn't work for Cerberus.

He wanted to be wrong. The man he'd known before... well, yeah, he kicked himself sometimes over having never asking Shepard out to lunch when he had the chance. But he'd like to know that if he tried that again he'd be going with Zach Shepard, and not an overhyped extension of the Illusive Man's reach.

\---

Earth was burning, and they left it behind.

Vega was livid, spitting bilingual curses. Shepard paced the length of the ship impatiently, saying very little unless it was to give orders. Kaidan was pissed too, and worried about his students on top of that, but he wasn't about to go against Hackett. The Admiral had told them to head to Mars, so that was where they were going.

If a Prothean artifact was their last hope, though, that was pretty damn desperate. The Protheans had lost their war with the Reapers. All they'd been able to do was buy this cycle time.

There was a tense silence between him, Vega, and Shepard as they all suited up. Kaidan chalked it up to the fact that none of them had wanted to leave Earth, at first, but then when they were on the shuttle, Shepard took to avoiding his gaze and hanging around near Vega up front instead, and... Well. It was understandable that things were a little tense between them. Three years, and Horizon, and Cerberus.

Kaidan didn't want to be the one to bring it up, though, and since Shepard wasn't bringing it up either, it seemed to him like that was just going to be how things _were_ between them. Which didn't bother him. Really. Shepard had _changed_ , after all, and Kaidan wasn't sure he wanted to be friendly with the man the Commander had become.

They touched down at the LZ, put on their helmets, stepped out onto the Martian soil, and were greeted by the sight of ATVs. Someone had gotten there before them.

The Commander found an abandoned datapad, and Kaidan could hear how his face had twisted up in a sneer when he spoke over the comm. "Cerberus."

That was ten kinds of not good. Kaidan had a bad feeling about this. "Any idea why they're here, Commander?" he asked.

Shepard's gaze fell on him through the visor. "How the hell should I know?"

"Well, you were with them."

"You think I--" The Commander cut himself off, sucked in a breath and let it out slow, looking quickly away from Kaidan. "I haven't been in contact with anyone from Cerberus in almost a year. The last thing I did before handing myself in to the Alliance was tell the Illusive Man to piss off," he said, in a tone that suggested forced calm.

"It's true, Major," said Vega. "He's been under house arrest. Everything he did was monitored; if he were talking to Cerberus, the Alliance would know about it."

Kaidan sighed, relaxing a little. "Right." Not that it fixed or changed anything. "Okay. But that still doesn't answer the question of why they're here in the first place."

"Knowing Cerberus, we'll probably find out in a bit," Shepard said.

The idea of Shepard knowing Cerberus left a bad taste in Kaidan's mouth.

\---

"Looks like an execution squad," Vega said grimly, his voice low. Not that it mattered how low their voices were with helmets and comms, but some habits were hard to break. The three of them were on a hill overlooking the scene, and they hadn't been spotted yet.

Shepard was watching the Cerberus goons as they stood over the civilians with their guns. Didn't even flinch as the last one was cut down, nor did he have even a word to say about it. Kaidan couldn't see his face, but he could swear the Commander looked tense.

"If we're careful, we can take them out before they know what's hit them," Kaidan suggested. "Maybe if we-- uh."

The Commander was shifting, moving to stand. And he was powering up his biotics.

"Commander?"

A split second later, Shepard was gone in a streak of blue light. Before either Kaidan or Vega could react, the Commander had slammed into one of the Cerberus operatives with a full-force biotic charge - something that Kaidan himself couldn't even begin to do - and blown the other's head into bloody chunks with a point-blank shotgun blast to the faceplate. Then a third goon was blown back into a parked ATV with a shockwave of biotic force that came from Shepard overloading his barrier, hard enough that the vehicle threatened to tip over from the force of the impact.

Holy _shit_. Where had Shepard even _learned_ something like that? He certainly hadn't been that good with his biotics back when Kaidan had known him before.

Kaidan and Vega blinked at one another, then at the Commander, in disbelief. Vega shrugged and headed down to join the man, and Kaidan could only follow him mutely. What had just happened? When the hell had Shepard even been okay with taking risks like that, anyway?

 _Always_ , something in the back of Kaidan's mind noted unhelpfully. _Stealing the Normandy. Charging into a miniature mass-relay in the Mako with no real idea what was on the other side of it. "Suicidally brave" is exactly the kind of thing Shepard would do._

No. That wasn't right. Shepard had changed. Kaidan knew it, had known it since Horizon. Because the Shepard he knew wouldn't have worked with Cerberus to begin with, would he?

_Maybe you're wrong._

"I didn't know your biotics packed that much of a punch, Commander," Kaidan said instead, as Shepard rifled through the Cerberus troops' things and nicked one of their nicer shotguns; the Alliance hadn't seen fit to give him anything better than standard issue.

"They didn't," the Commander answered. "Cerberus set me up with L5 implants while I was out."

Kaidan looked sharply at the Commander, frowning under his faceplate. The man seemed perfectly calm about the admission as he slapped a fresh thermal clip into his stolen shotgun. "Kind of risky, getting a replacement implant like that," the Major said.

Shepard only shrugged. "Not when you're barely more than 'meat and tubes' as it is," he said, and gestured for both Vega and Kaidan to follow him as he wordlessly continued towards the research station, leaving the older biotic with more questions than answers.

One thing was certain, though: statements like that didn't help him to trust Shepard _more_.

\---

Liara was there when they arrived, being followed by a handful of Cerberus agents. It was a relief for Kaidan to see her there; she was fairly normal. Fairly sane. He could trust her, even though he didn't know if he could trust Shepard or not anymore.

As it turned out, the team at the research facility had discovered a new piece of Prothean tech: a schematic, for a weapon that could, hypothetically, defeat the Reapers. Liara had been called in on the project as an expert on the Protheans. Kaidan could hardly believe it, but he'd take any shred of hope he could get right about then. They'd have to cut their way through a lot of Cerberus people to get to the thing, sure, but he'd almost _expected_ that.

What he hadn't expected was the lengths those Cerberus people were willing to go to when it came to ensuring that they were the ones who got ahold of the Prothean tech first. Opening airlocks and depressurizing the building with the scientists still inside? That was the kind of thing he could see a hardened Batarian slaver doing with their rowdy "cargo", not human beings who supposedly worked toward the betterment of the rest of humanity.

He thought about asking Shepard what the hell was going on, or whether the Commander had seen this kind of thing when he worked with Cerberus before. But then he remembered that one raving, broken soldier they'd found from Shepard's unit back on Akuze, and decided not to say anything. If it was the same man, even after Cerberus had rebuilt him, then all he'd do is hurt him.

And if it wasn't, Kaidan wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer.

Once they restored the building's air pressure, the three of them were quick to take off their helmets. Stale filtered air was still stale filtered air no matter whether it came from your suit or a more serious climate control unit made for a larger enclosed space like a building or a ship, but that didn't make wearing a helmet all the time any more pleasant. Then Liara and Shepard ducked into the room with all the security equipment, leaving the Major with a moment to himself.

Kaidan took a nice, deep breath, and smiled faintly; even air that tasted faintly metallic and musty from the Mars surface dust that blew in was better than the smell of the inside of his suit. Always came out of the thing feeling like he needed a shower. Out of reflex he wiped the sweat off of his brow with the back of his gauntleted hand.

Shepard was the first to step out from the room, blinking and averting his eyes quickly when Kaidan looked up. Without the helmet, the Commander's expression was unguarded, and if he were to be perfectly honest with himself, it looked to Kaidan like Shepard was actually a little bit nervous.

Awkward silence followed, and Shepard was the one to break it, clearing his throat. "So. Major, huh?" he asked.

Kaidan noticed that Shepard wasn't looking at him. "Yeah," he said. "What about it?"

The Commander got a tiny smile. "You deserve it. You're a good soldier, Alenko."

 _What?_ Kaidan frowned. "I'm... not sure what the hell I'm supposed to say to that, Commander. You were gone, and I moved on with my life."

"Yeah, I know." Shepard rubbed at the back of his neck, his brow furrowing in a way that tugged at his scars. "I just... I don't know. I wanna get past this."

"I don't know if we can, Commander," Kaidan said honestly. "I'd like to, yeah, but... that's a lot to get past, y'know?"

He'd forgotten how good the Commander was at looking like a kicked puppy. "Kaidan, you know me. If there had been another way--"

"Don't 'Kaidan' me, this is _Cerberus_ we're talking about, Shepard! The same people that got an entire colony turned into husks, remember? The same people who were the cause of that thresher maw attack on Akuze!" Shepard flinched, but Kaidan wasn't done. "I was _there_ when you found Rear Admiral Kahoku dead, and the experiments they did with Thorian creepers, and all those mindless Rachni they smuggled off of Noveria. Did you just somehow _forget_ all that?"

Shepard went quiet. Again, he wouldn't meet Kaidan's gaze, staring at the floor instead.

And Kaidan had his answer. "Then there's Aratoht, and, _yeah_ , that about says it right there, doesn't it?" The Major smiled bitterly, mirthlessly. They all knew the score there. "You've changed, Shepard."

There was a very long, tense pause. Neither of them spoke for a while. Kaidan felt almost vindicated by Shepard's silence.

When the Commander finally broke that silence, his voice sounded hollow. "They tried to infiltrate and sabotage the Quarian flotilla," Shepard said. "And I'm not sure that they _didn't_ end up being the cause of what happened on Horizon somehow, since they were able to plant a forged distress beacon on a Collector ship. The _same_ Collector ship. They threw their own people, _good_ people, at researching a derelict Reaper, unprotected, and all of them were indoctrinated.

"One of my crew was raised in a school for biotic kids that they ran. From what I saw when we went there, it made BaAT look like a summer camp. And yeah, you're damn right about Akuze. I didn't forget what they did to Toombs, either." The Commander shuddered a little. "Nothing I saw ever implied that Cerberus had changed, or was about to. If there had been another way to stop the Collectors - if the Alliance or the Council had even _once_ made it look like they gave a shit - then I'd have used it. In a heartbeat."

"Don't give me that. The Commander Shepard I knew wouldn't have stooped to that level, _ever_. He would've found a way." Kaidan swallowed thickly. Just because he wanted to believe, wanted to trust, didn't mean it was a good idea to.

"Maybe." Shepard's gaze turned cold. Hard. It was something Kaidan had seen before, but it had never been directed at him. "I shouldn't have to justify myself to you, Alenko."

 _No_ , Kaidan thought. _You shouldn't. The man I remember wouldn't have done anything he'd need justification for._ "You came back saying Cerberus rebuilt you. You admit that they did some upgrades while they were at it. You work for them for a bit, answering to the Illusive Man himself. Then you do an asteroid drop on a mass relay that kills three hundred thousand Batarians. How can I think that you're the same person after all that?"

Shepard's eyes narrowed, brows furrowed tightly. "Three-hundred-four thousand nine-hundred forty-two, Kaidan," he corrected, voice low. "If you're going to take how many _people_ I failed to save and rub it in my face, at least get your numbers right."

And with that, Kaidan's doubts returned. Because wasn't it just like Shepard to turn a safe statistic back into a horrifically large number of individual lives? "Oh no, don't try to shrug off that they were Batarian lives. You know full well the kinda implications I could say that has."

"Yeah. I do." For some reason, though, Shepard's look softened. Turned less cold. Less threatening. "But you're not saying them, are you?"

No, he wasn't. Revenge wasn't Shepard's thing. But at the same time, if Shepard had changed, he'd have no reason to get that revenge. "I don't have to. Anyone who knows anything about you would be thinking it."

There it was. The hole in Kaidan's logic. "Except you," Shepard said. "You know _me_."

Kaidan exhaled shakily. _Shit_. "Yeah."

He did. He really, really did. He'd read the report, and it had been absolutely what Shepard would do. As well as being the kind of thing Shepard would absolutely kick himself over, in spite of it needing to be done, and in spite of it being a relatively small number of people in comparison to the galaxy at large, and even when he had all the justification he'd ever need to hate those people for what they were. The icing on the cake had been when Shepard had turned himself in for it, without so much as putting up a fight.

Shepard smiled. Real, honest, relieved, open - the kind of thing those tiny smiles three years ago had implied, but never shown outright. It was just as good of a look on him as Kaidan had thought it would be. "Well, you always were stubborn," he said.

Kaidan was able to laugh. It felt good to do so, like he hadn't in a while. "Hah, _me?"_ he said, smirking. He was teasing, though. They both were. Then Liara came out of the back room with such impeccable timing that Kaidan suspected she might've been listening in. He didn't blame her for worrying, honestly; he and Shepard had gotten into another fight earlier over a Cerberus goon looking like a husk under the helmet, and she'd witnessed at least part of that. If Kaidan were in her shoes, he would've probably been eavesdropping, too. For all she knew, they could've both been in for a no-holds-barred biotic beatdown.

But he was fine. Shepard was fine. And if he had to hazard a guess, he'd say that things between the two of them just might go back to being okay too. Eventually.

Hopefully.

 

**Author's Note:**

> AND THEN EVIL CERBERUS ROBOT AND THEN SAD.


End file.
